Sunday, March 23, 2008

In “The God Delusion” Richard Dawkins proves that fundamentalism is a frightening doctrine – even from an atheist. Like any fundamentalist, Dawkins is unwilling to tolerate any opinion other than his own. Instead of presenting us with a coherent cosmology, most of Dawkins’ book is a petty and defensive screed against anyone with the temerity to disagree with the learned biologist. It’s really a shame. Dawkins is a colossal intellect overshadowed by an even larger ego.

Even the few original insights “The God Delusion” offers us, such as an exploration of the Darwinian reasons for religion, are marred by a continually mean-spirited nit-picking of any ideas that contradict Dawkins’s own. Perhaps the lowest point in the book comes when Dawkins, in a gesture reminiscent of a teenager scornfully scrawling would-be witticisms in the margins of textbook, inserts his own insipid comments between the lines of a speech by physicist Freeman Dyson. Really, Richard. This is beneath you.

At his best Dawkins sounds like a cranky Carl Sagan, grudgingly admitting there is beauty and awe in the mysteries of the universe. At his worst, Dawkins echoes the dogged intolerance of Jerry Falwell and the Ayatolla Khomeni. As someone who believes organized religion is a phase humanity will eventually outgrow, I found “The God Delusion” deeply disappointing.

My novels in brief

America Libre,House Dividedand Pancho Land imagine a nightmarish, not-too-distant future when tensions between Hispanic separatists and Anglo supremacists ignite an ethnic conflict that leads to an armed insurrection seeking to redraw the borders of the United States. A cautionary tale, The Class H Trilogy is a wake-up call to the dangers of bigotry and extremism in a growing ethnic gulf.

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Could it happen here?

When I began writing America Libre in 2004, some thought the book’s premise was unrealistic. An uprising by Hispanics? The idea seemed far-fetched, they said. Today, the skeptics are no longer so certain. I posed the nightmare scenario of America Libre as a wake up call to the dangers of extremism - on all sides of this explosive issue. Hispanic immigration is a hotly debated topic today. Yet it is only the tip of the iceberg. Over the next decade, three other factors will prove equally significant. READ MORE